Paper City Streets: Stroudwater Street

Connecting Westbrook's downtown with Portland's outer Congress Street, Stroudwater Street was named after the village of Stroudwater, founded by Westbrook's namesake Col. Thomas Westbrook in 1727.

The genesis of the naming of Stroudwater village is mixed. For some time, historians attributed the name to a village in England. But Myrtle Kittridge Lovejoy, author of the 1985 book This Was Stroudwater: 1727-1860 disagrees:

In fact, the name was employed much earlier. Stroud, according to an early
Oxford dictionary, was not only "coarse red cloth used in bartering with the
Indians," but significantly a "marshy landcovered with brushwood." Such a
description would wholly fit the margins of the village. A record from 1688 used
the word to describe the exact location. It reads, "over against the stround
water [sic] mills belonging to Sylvanus Davis." Maps show Davis owned a so-called
"mile square" at Capisic and the site later occupied by Colonel Westbrook's house
and mill. The quote would seem to confirm the base origin of the word
Stroudwater, and other deeds supply clues to complete it. Seventeenth-century
land transfers clearly specified the kinds of mills involved, whether water or
wind. The latter, in fact, were quite numerous. Such descriptive differences were
important as future landmarks, and they continued into the next century. A deed
as late as 1720 conveyed land "adjoyning to Stroud Water Mills." It was natural
that English settlers would translate place names to suit their own idiom. As
settlement grew, the descriptives merged, first on the tongue, inevitable on
paper. From "Stroud Water Mills" to "Stroudwater Mills" was a natural
progression. The freshwater stream became Stroudwater Stream, Brook, or River and
the settlement became simply "Stroudwater."

- John C.L. Morgan